Booker, in Senate Race, Will Try to Match His Reputation

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Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark, at a gay pride celebration in Maplewood on Sunday. Mr. Booker quoted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Langston Hughes in his speech to the crowd.CreditCreditRobert Stolarik for The New York Times

MAPLEWOOD, N.J. — With the announcement that Cory A. Booker would speak in five minutes, a crowd flooded the largely empty lawn at the gay pride celebration here over the weekend. It took him twice that amount of time to reach the stage, for all the people mobbing him for photos and autographs.

It was Mr. Booker’s second day on the campaign trail, and as his voice boomed through the microphone — “Hello Maplewood!” — he spoke of a debt to the pioneers of the struggle for civil rights.

After he quoted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and before he recited a Langston Hughes poem, Mr. Booker, who is black, expanded on a personal note: “My father used to tell me as a high school student, ‘Don’t walk around here like you hit a triple, boy. You were born on third base.’ ”

It can sometimes seem that Mr. Booker was born on third base in politics, too. For more than a decade, he has occupied a level of celebrity outsized for a councilman and then mayor of the historically troubled city of Newark.

Now, as he embarks on a whirlwind run for the United States Senate, he finally seems poised to step into a position that matches his much-discussed promise.

If he wins, Mr. Booker will instantly become one of the most prominent figures in Washington.

Still, he must first prevail in a four-way primary in the dog days of summer. His opponents are already planning to hit him with now-familiar criticisms: that he cares more about his national brand than he does New Jersey’s problems and that his coziness with bankers and his support for school vouchers disqualify him as a Democrat.

While the race came a year earlier than Mr. Booker had expected, he had been aggressively preparing for a campaign.

When news broke last week that Senator Frank R. Lautenberg had died, Mr. Booker was in his car on his way to the airport in Los Angeles, where he had spent the weekend raising money for the campaign he intended to run when Mr. Lautenberg retired in 2014.

His flight was not back to Newark but to Chicago, where he continued to raise money for two days before returning for Mr. Lautenberg’s funeral.

And this past Monday, when his three primary opponents were in the state capital to deliver the signatures on their petitions to run, Mr. Booker was back in California for a fund-raiser in Hollywood and another at the home of the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Mr. Booker told friends last week that he knew he had to be careful about being too aggressive about jumping into the race.

Earlier this year, when he declared his intention to run for the seat before Mr. Lautenberg, a five-term senator and the chamber’s last veteran of World War II, had said he was ready to leave it, some fellow Democrats blasted Mr. Booker for a lack of respect.

So Mr. Booker kept a low public profile until the senator’s burial on Friday. But he moved quickly behind the scenes, calling party leaders in several counties for their support. He wrested a media strategy firm away from his rivals.

By the time he finally held a conference call with donors on Friday to tell them he was running, campaign workers at his Newark office were answering the telephones with, “Cory Booker for Senate.”

Though with his frequent appearances on national television, the two documentaries and books about him, Mr. Booker would seem to hardly need to tell anyone who he is, he has spent the last few days touting his New Jersey credentials.

Announcing his candidacy at the headquarters of Audible.com in Newark, he described his life as a journey from one of the state’s smallest suburbs to the mayoralty of its largest city. He talked about taking his prom date to the Jersey Shore — a regional tradition.

Standing next to former Senator Bill Bradley, another nationally celebrated New Jersey politician, Mr. Booker said he had “gotten to know a lot about criticism.”

“I’ve heard it,” he said. “Too much Twitter from the mayor, too much exposure. There’s not a criticism I haven’t heard over the years, I’ve heard it all. But there’s one thing that everyone has to admit about my life as a professional, from my days working in housing high rises here in Newark as a tenants’ rights attorney to my time as mayor, is that I do not run from challenges. I run toward them.”

He was imposing enough that one of the nation’s most popular governors, Chris Christie, announced he would spend $24 million to hold a special election in October rather than risk appearing on the ballot with Mr. Booker on the general election day three weeks later.

The three candidates opposing Mr. Booker in the primary have already signaled that they intend to make the primary a referendum on him.

(There are 700,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in New Jersey, and the state’s best-known Republicans declined to run, so his toughest battle is most likely to be in August.)

Though two polls have shown him with large leads, his allies and opponents alike caution that the election is unpredictable, particularly since no one knows what turnout will look like in mid-August.

Of the four Democratic contenders, Representative Frank Pallone Jr., who has served in Congress for 24 years, has the most money and strong ties to unions and other Democratic groups.

Representative Rush D. Holt, an astrophysicist and the son of a former senator, has won tough races before, against big names and big money. Sheila Y. Oliver, the speaker of the State Assembly, would be the first woman elected to the Senate from New Jersey.

Because she is black and represents the same area as Mr. Booker, there has been speculation that she would win votes that otherwise might go to him.

Ms. Oliver’s comment as she dropped off her nominating petitions Monday indicated the argument Mr. Booker’s opponents will make: “I don’t bring a sense of entitlement,” she said.

But Mr. Booker’s advisers are counting on his celebrity being more a plus than a negative. The other candidates might win in a slow burn, but the primary is more likely to reward an instant sizzle.

In Maplewood on Sunday, Paul Schmitz and Karen Baicker and their son Jacob were among the people who had flooded the lawn when the announcement came over the public address system that Mr. Booker was about to speak.

Mr. Schmitz said he also likes Representative Holt — “It’s sort of a shame to have them running at the same time” — but thinks he will vote for Mr. Booker. “I know a little more about Booker,” he said.

The mayor spoke for eight minutes, without notes. And afterward, behind the stage, it took him another 20 minutes to get through the crowd of well-wishers to his S.U.V.

Dressed in a black suit in temperatures approaching 80 degrees, he mopped his brow with a handkerchief and was ready to finally get away. But one more fan was waiting with a camera phone: James Bormann, who will turn 18 in September, too late to vote in the primary.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: For Booker, the Sprint to Match His Reputation Begins. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe